Tackling wheat blast: State to compensate farmers in Nadia, Murshidabad for crops burnt

The Bengal government has decided to give compensation to wheat farmers in Nadia and Murshidabad districts whose agricultural lands were burnt to curb the wheat blast disease which has spread throughout the country.

Crops on around 1,000 hectare of land in the two districts were affected by the disease. It is suspected that it entered India after some farmers used seeds from Bangladesh to cultivate wheat.In 2016, crops on around 20,000 hectare in six districts in Bangladesh were damaged when the fungus entered the continent for the first time.

Now, its presence has been spotted in the two districts in Bengal, which lie along the Indo-Bangladesh border.

Taking immediate steps, standing crops where the deadly fungus for wheat was spotted were set on fire so as to prevent the disease from spreading further.

Purnendu Basu, the state Agriculture minister, said in the Assembly on Monday that district magistrates of both the districts were looking after the task of checking the spread of wheat blast disease. The state government will give compensation to the farmers.

It is learnt that the compensation will be given as per the minimum support price (MSP) set by the Centre. For wheat, the MSP is around Rs 1,600 per quintal.

Usually, the Centre pays compensation when 33 percent of the production of a season on a unit area gets damaged due to natural calamity or any other incidents.

The state government is hopeful that the Centre would allot an amount to compensate the loss of the farmers.

However, instead of waiting for a nod from the Centre, the state government has proactively finalised that the compensation will be given after calculating their loss as per last year's production on the same pieces of land.

At the same time, the state Agriculture department would engage scientists to test the soil and, based on the report, the scientists will suggest to farmers which

crops would be suitable to grow on the plot and what precautions should be taken to ensure better production next season.